[Lnc-business] Fwd: Re: email list archive

[Joe Bishop-Henchman]

Forwarding Dr. Moulton's email in case anyone did not receive it.

My personal suggestion on this is to flip the switch as he suggests, and 
establish a best practice for members of this list to have no more than 
two links in signature lines. The problem is caused when someone with 
lots of links in their signature sends lots replies to themselves on one 
thread. Addressing either the number of links in signature lines (my 
suggestion) or how people reply to themselves (Dr. Moulton's suggestion 
below) solves it.

JBH

------------
Joe Bishop-Henchman
LNC Member (At-Large)
joe.bishop-henchman at lp.org
www.facebook.com/groups/189510455174837

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: email list archive
Date: 2019-05-20 16:28
 From: Chuck Moulton <chuck at moulton.org>
To: Caryn Ann Harlos <caryn.ann.harlos at lp.org>, John Phillips 
<john.phillips at lp.org>
Cc: Alex Merced <alex.merced at lp.org>, Alicia Mattson 
<alicia.mattson at lp.org>, Caryn Ann Harlos <secretary at lp.org>, Dan 
Fishman <dan.fishman at lp.org>, Dustin Nanna <dustin.nanna at lp.org>, 
Elizabeth Van Horn <elizabeth.vanhorn at lp.org>, Erin Adams 
<erin.adams at lp.org>, Jeff Lyons <jeff.lyons at lp.org>, Jeffrey Hewitt 
<jeffrey.hewitt at lp.org>, Jim Lark <james.lark at lp.org>, Joe 
Bishop-Henchman <joe.bishop-henchman at lp.org>, Johnny Adams 
<johnny.adams at lp.org>, Joshua Smith <joshua.smith at lp.org>, Justin 
O'Donnell <justin.odonnell at lp.org>, Ken Moellman <ken at moellman.com>, 
Kenneth Brent Olsen <kenneth.olsen at lp.org>, Nicholas Sarwark 
<chair at lp.org>, Phillip Anderson <phillip.anderson at lp.org>, Richard 
Longstreth <richard.longstreth at lp.org>, Sam Goldstein 
<sam.goldstein at lp.org>, Steven Nekhaila <steven.nekhaila at lp.org>, Susan 
Hogarth <susan.hogarth at lp.org>, Tim Hagan <treasurer at lp.org>, Victoria 
Paige Lee <victoria.paige.lee at lp.org>, Whitney Bilyeu 
<whitney.bilyeu at lp.org>, William Redpath <william.redpath at lp.org>

LNC members,

I'm not sure how to respond to these oft-repeated (though previously 
debunked) talking points without being a bit snarky, so I sat on this 
reply hoping I could avoid sending it.  However, people seem to be 
taking them seriously; therefore, I probably need to respond rather than 
"res ipsa loquitor" my previous correspondence.  It is quite frightening 
that LNC members and staff seem to be considering migrating to Google 
groups.


Caryn Ann Harlos wrote:
> The link spam at the bottom makes the list unreadable for us to do 
> business.

I remain mystified by any complaints about so-called "link spam".  When 
junk is at the beginning of an email or in the middle of an email, I can 
see an argument for it being distracting.  Luckily, I have developed a 
foolproof algorithm for circumventing the "link spam" at the end of 
emails caused by that setting:

1. read each email until you get to the signature line of its author

2. stop reading

My extensive testing has yet to reveal a single email sent to the LNC in 
the past 10 years which cannot be handled by this clever technique.

However, even if it were true that extra links at the bottom of an email 
were a negative, it remains the case that the positive of having a 
readable archive is orders of magnitude more important, outweighing the 
negative of the links.


Ken Moellman wrote:
> The problem is that the list of URLs self-compounds, and so every reply 
> recreates the URL tags for the previous message. This eventually leads 
> to the list being completely unreadable by some LNC members.
This is simply false.

The list of links does not "self-compound".  When list users include all 
previous messages at the bottom of their previous emails, the list of 
links grows in that manner.  You -- and many others -- seem to be taking 
it as a given that people do and should include all previous messages at 
the bottom of their previous emails.  That is emphatically not the case.

It is trivial for users to trim their emails, removing previous replies 
and only quoting what is actually relevant.  Not only is trimming emails 
possible and trivial, but doing so is also part and parcel of basic 
email etiquette.

See for example RFC 1855 (among many other writings on this topic):
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855

RFC 1855 (Netiquette Guidelines, p. 8):
> If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you 
> summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just 
> enough text of the original to give a context.  This will make sure 
> readers understand when they start to read your response. Since 
> NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the postings from 
> one host to another, it is possible to see a response to a message 
> before seeing the original.  Giving context helps everyone. But do not 
> include the entire original!
Trimming emails would be logical even if it weren't polite.  Repeating 
the entire email thread below every message serves no purpose 
whatsoever.  The entire thread is already available at least three 
different places: 1) in the email boxes of everyone on the LNC, 2) on 
the LNC business list archive, 3) on the Google reflector list.  This 
repetition is wasteful: every time the entire thread is sent again 
wastes time and resources uploading the email, time and resources 
downloading the email, and resources transporting the email, including 
quotas for those people who have a limited upload/download allotment on 
their cellphone plans.  The signal to noise ratio plummets with each new 
reply to a growing thread.

If anyone out there is actually reading the entire thread of all 
previous emails every time a new email is sent to you, I am pleased to 
tell you that you can free up an extra 15-20 hours per day every day if 
you stop doing that.

There is no "self-compounding" of email links.  I'm reminded of the line 
"guns don't kill people, people kill people".  Acting as if email blows 
up in size on its own robs people of agency.  Each individual should 
take personal responsibility for his or her conscious decision to 
violate basic email etiquette by not trimming his or her replies.  Email 
doesn't compound links, people compound links.


Caryn Ann Harlos wrote:
> I suggest we put a notice on the piper mail page alerting to the google 
> reflector list which has none of those issues.

None of these issues?!!

The Google reflector list is mostly useless.  It doesn't list who 
authored each email.  It is impossible to sort by date, subject, author, 
etc.  Emails are randomly missing.  You need to scroll for a long time 
to get to older emails (unlike the mailman archives which has the entire 
list initially available).  It ties people to a proprietary platform 
(Google) outside of the LP's control.  Etc.  I can't imagine anyone 
getting anything at all productive from the Google reflector.  For 
example, if I had to look through the Google reflector to compile my LNC 
vote charts, it would increase my time needed by a factor of at least 
1,000.

If other people enjoy the Google reflector, more power to them, but 
throwing out useful mailman archives for that trainwreck would be beyond 
ridiculous.  I get the impression that people advocating for Google 
groups have never actually done a side by side comparison of Mailman vs. 
Google groups.


Chuck Moulton, J.D., Ph.D.
Life Member, Libertarian Party